


homegrown

by ohmygodwhy



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 06:44:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11572563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygodwhy/pseuds/ohmygodwhy
Summary: Jughead wants to tell him that it doesn’t just work like that—you can’t toss people aside and then assume they’ll fall back into you because you feel bad, because you apologize. He wishes he could be the person to teach him that, too, but he probably won’t be, because Archie is like his only fucking friend and it’s been hell having funny shit to say in the hallways with no one to say it to.(dynamics shift and things change and maybe that's okay)





	homegrown

**Author's Note:**

> i watched all of this stupid show in one sitting and wrote this running on 36 hours w no sleep lol i hope i did this boy justice
> 
> warning for mentions of sexual abuse/everything grundy related

 

First and foremost, Jughead is from The Wrong Side Of The Tracks.

He hears people say that a lot, The Wrong Side Of The Tracks, the dividing line between the north and south sides of their quaint little town. People talk about it like it’s a great wall you have to climb over, a high metal fence with barbed electric wire, but you can cross the line with one step. Jughead does it all the time. Sometimes he jumps over it, just because he likes the idea of jumping over an imaginary wall like it’s nothing—sometimes a kid from the Southside can do more than an adult from the north one. 

He is from the Wrong Side, but he goes to school on the northside for the majority of his life. He spends all kinds of time on the north. It’s nice. Pop’s Diner is on the northside; he’s spent hours that add up to days in there and probably has a tab as long as his arm. He’ll pay it off someday, has a jar set aside for tab money whenever he has a little extra. It’s not often, but he’s getting there. 

All his friends are from the Right Side Of The Tracks—other than Betty’s mom, he thinks he heard his dad say something about that once; he could take her as an example of what someone like him could achieve in life, but he’s also pretty sure she’s batshit crazy. Cheryl’s mom is probably top tier batshit crazy, but he thinks that was inevitable. The castle she lives in is suffocating. 

Archie was born on the Right Side, but the two of them have been going to school together since they were little, because despite the great wall, they lived in the same school district—they would spend the night in Jughead’s treehouse on the weekends and mess around in Archie’s attic. They still mess around in the attic, but the treehouse has mostly gone unused, like a framed photo you forgot is still on the wall until you actually see it again. 

Whenever Jughead looks at him, at Archie, he thinks he’s seeing the best of what the Right Side has to offer.

Sometimes it hurts his eyes.

 

If Archie embodies the Right Side, it must have more flaws than you’d think, because Archie is nice, he really is, but he’s also an asshole. 

Jughead waits in his favorite booth of the diner, early in the morning on the Fourth of July, for hours. It’s a nice day outside, a light sky and a light breeze and a light way of moving your feet; the sky is light blue like one of Betty’s favorite sweaters. 

He made a playlist for their road trip last night—he knows Archie will argue about it because Archie _also_ made a road trip playlist, he’s bragged about it for the last week. And they’ve been planning this for months. They’ve wanted to do something like this since they were in middle school, young and on top of the world.

Jughead does not feel on top of the world anymore, three cups of coffee later, slamming a tip on the table and leaving the neon lights twinkling behind him.

The asshole canceled over text message. For all his looks, Archie’s never had much tact.

Vaguely, he wonders if it’s a girl or something, and he wonders if it’s him. Eccentricities get less and less charming the older you get; a sharp tongue is more rebellious than clever or cute. 

Summer means no school and grass stains on your knees and then it means cool drinks with lots of ice and books in the shade or brief flings that last a month but feel like heaven—a temporary one, because all season are temporary. Summers here feel so short. 

_This_ summer feels so long. It drags on by the minute, by the second, because suddenly he has nothing to do; Archie is avoiding him, whether it’s on purpose or not, and he doesn’t wanna hang around his dad’s place because the younger Serpent members are always around more often during the summer, and Betty has a lot of interning/volunteer work stuff she’s doing. Always busy. He thinks she’ll change the world someday. Just give her time and she’ll blow you away.

It’s not all bad, though. He gets a job at a nice little shop and then quits that one to go full time at his other job at the Drive-In for the summer. He likes it there. At night he gets to watch the classics from a first class seat and set the tapes rolling himself. It feels official, even though it’s a Dying Art. 

Also, he’s been sleeping there for the last few months, ever since he left the trailer with his mom’s old camping bag stuffed full of everything he thought he would need and a blossoming red bruise around his left eye, still caught up on the fact that his mom got out of here but decided to take one kid and ditch the other, so that’s definitely a plus. He doesn’t like to think about all that, though, so he focuses on the movies and his writing and does not think at all about Archie or his dad. 

(His dad always used to tell him to keep his heart close to his chest, ‘trust only your own’ and all that. His advice is hardly ever worth shit for how slurred it comes out most of the time, but this bit is actually useful, despite the fact that he doesn’t know who ‘His Own’ are. He’s his own person, if that counts.)

The summer passes molasses-slow, hot and bordering on unbearable. He gets his summer reading done in the shade of the park he used to go to when he was younger, because the room he sleeps in at the Drive-In is too hot and stuffy inside; he has to sleep with the door cracked open during the night to help the residual heat slide out. Sometimes he stays late at Pop’s so he doesn’t have to sleep in a left-over oven, and sometimes he doesn’t. He writes a lot, deletes it all because it’s garbage when he doesn’t have anything solid to write about, and writes again.

Summer ends with a fucking bang. There’s a dead student from the richest family in the town. That, Jughead thinks, looking out at the boats searching the river, is a Story. Life and death and the twisted tragedy that comes with it—and he cringes because that makes him sound a little too Edgar Allen Poe. He loves the guy and appreciates the horror genre, but that’s not how he wants to be remembered. (He hopes he has a choice in that, because Arthur Conan Doyle didn’t wanna be remembered for solely Sherlock Holmes, but that’s pretty much what happened.) 

 

School starts, and every time he sees Archie all he can think about is that pit of anxiety that slowly grew in his chest while he waited for hours and hours because there was no way Archie would bail on this, they’ve been friends for years, friends don’t bail on shit they suggested in the first place—Archie never bails on plans with Jughead unless it’s some kind of emergency, unless he really needs to. He’s the type of person who will show up even if he’s feeling like shit. Jughead doesn’t know what was so important that he shot a four word text three hours after they planned to meet up, but he hopes it was fucking worth it.

(A part of him wonders if Archie knew how long he waited. It would've been kinder to let him know before he packed all his stuff up and then had to leave the diner with a bag full of camping shit and a sleeping bag tucked under his arm by himself because no one else showed the fuck up. So what if Jughead is bitter; he has a right to be.)

Things had been changing long before the fourth, he thinks. An argument, near the end of their freshman year, in Mr. Andrews’ car on the way home from a party that Jughead wasn’t invited to, because he’d been walking home and Mr. A had run into him coincidentally and insisted on driving him the rest of the way, swinging by to pick Betty and his son up from Moose’s house.

_I have a question,_ he’d said to Archie, everything in him twisting up and pouring out because it was late and the two of them looked so happy as a duo when they’d been a trio since they were like seven, _did you not extend the invite because you thought I wouldn’t like it, or because you were afraid people would laugh at you if you brought me along?_

Archie had flushed a deep, angry red, stark again the white of his shirt, and hadn’t said a goddamn word. 

_Cool,_ he had thought, he had said. _Awesome. Good to know._

After that, things had been Different. They’d brushed up against one another but their edges were sharper now, grated against each other in ways they never had before. They argued over petty shit. He hated it.

Betty isn’t around much this year because she’s busy, crazy parents, the new, scandalous mystery girl, lots of extracurriculars. She and Archie had always been best friends; Jughead had always thought his place with them was solid, but he supposes they’ve always been more each other’s friends than his. He quit the Blue & Gold last year after the car incident anyways, his parents’ fighting getting worse enough that most nights he would take Jellybean to Pop’s or the movies to get her out of the house, so they don’t have much of an excuse to run into each other. 

Everything is different, now. A kid is dead. Everything has changed, but time still tick tick tocks away. 

 

Grundy is a phenomenon that he never expected but thinks he should’ve been prepared for, for some ungodly reason. Should’ve seen the signs. 

In The Story, she’s scripted as a devil in disguise, the villain you don’t see at first, pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain. She’s like Debby Jelinsky from the Addams Family movies, but instead of lying and marrying for money she just lies and sexually abuses her high school students. 

He slips into Archie’s room at around 10 at night. The moon is barely a sliver outside. Mr Andrews says that he might not be ready to talk about it, but let him in anyways. 

He doesn’t say much at first, just sits with folded legs against the wall underneath the window. Minutes pass in silence, so he pulls his beaten up laptop out of his backpack. He has to click the mouse a few more times than usual to get it to start up. 

“Her husband used to hurt her,” Archie says suddenly, “She had to go to the hospital once.” 

Jughead’s fingers still for just a moment, “I don’t care.”

“What?"  


“I don’t give a shit about what happened to her,” he doesn’t look away from the screen, even though by now he’s just typing _calm down_ over and over again, “She abused you.”

“Everyone keeps saying that!” Archie says, louder than before, “But I—I wanted everything that happened.”

Finally, Jughead raises his head. Archie isn't looking at him, eyes trained on the silver sliver in the sky outside; the light of the moon isn’t bright enough to reach them tonight, so Jughead can barely make him out in the glow of his laptop. 

“She manipulated you,” he says shortly, brutally honest because that’s what he is, that’s what Archie needs to hear, “into sex. You’re underage. It doesn’t matter what ‘happened to her’, it’s statutory rape.”

“She wasn’t like that,” quite, hushed, “She wasn’t a— _predator,_ like everyone’s been saying. She _cared_ about me.”

_“You_ cared about her,” Jughead counters, “She cared about not getting caught.”

Jughead types until his eyes sting and his fingers ache. He’s from the Wrong Side Of The Tracks. He knows about these things. 

Archie is silent.

 

Archie apologizes for real, eventually, something more than than a few burgers and some meaningful shared glances. 

He does buy him anther burger as a starting point, elbows propped on the other side of the booth Jughead’s spent the last hour in. It’s late; his smile—soft, an apology—glints under the neon lights. The moon is almost full tonight. 

Jughead wants to tell him that it doesn’t just work like that—you can’t toss people aside and then assume they’ll fall back into you because you feel bad, because you apologize. He wishes he could be the person to teach him that, too, but he probably won’t be, because Archie is like his only fucking friend—because yeah, Betty was his friend but she was Archie’s friend first, and she took his side in their divorce even if she didn’t have a part in it—and it’s been hell having funny shit to say in the hallways with no one to say it to. He can always picture what Archie’s laugh would sound like if he slid over and made fun of Reggie’s hair or the way he wears his pants, but it’s not the same. 

He does make it clear that it’s not Okay, yet—maybe they’re okay, but they’re not Okay.

“You hurt me real bad, Arch,” he says late the next night, chin resting on his knees folded to his chest on Archie’s bed. 

“I know,” he says, all apologetic and sincere, “I’m sorry.”

Jughead shakes his head, “Sorry doesn’t always cut it, man,” is all he says. 

“I know,” Archie says again, and they leave it at that. 

Archie is really trying, Jughead can tell. They still don’t quite know how to exist around each other sometimes—it’s either stunted conversation or heavy silence or emotionally draining confessions when they’re alone together, but it’s getting better. Baby steps. All that. Jughead’s always been good at waiting—it’s what makes him a good detective, the nine year old in him boasts—so he can wait for this.

It’s like—a romantic comedy without all the romance and barely any of the comedy. It’s just stupid misunderstandings and shitty one-liners, the latter usually courtesy of Jughead. He’s great at those—he’s scripted as a sidekick, when he’s actually a part of the narrative and not the one writing it, not the hero, and sidekicks get all the funny one-liners. It makes them more likable and quirky. Maybe he’s quirky—he definitely not likable, but Archie seems to like him fine anyways. 

The things is, though, that once things fall apart, they will never be the same again, no matter how well you fix them up again. You can hot glue broken coffee mugs or teacups back together but you’ll always see the cracks. 

Something has shifted in their dynamic. He wants what they had before this Mess. He knows Archie wants it too, but he knows they won’t ever get it. And that’s okay. Things change, and maybe that’s okay. 

 

Living with the Andrews is not unfamiliar. He’s spent days and days and days in this house, in Archie’s room, in the kitchen, scraping his knees in the back yard. It’s not unfamiliar, but it’s still new. Weird.

There home is such a nice home, bright and warm and closer to the American Dream than Betty’s fake plastic household and batshit crazy parents ever will be. He can never imagine himself having a place in it, no matter how much time he’s spent looking through their fridge and sleeping in Archie’s room. 

A month ago and he’s hanging back after math class before he goes to lunch so he can count his pocket change in peace, trying to remember how much those little canned soups down at the market cost and how long they’ll last, if he has enough to buy a new toothbrush because his current one is old enough that Jughead has started to doubt its effectiveness. 

He’s wondering how much longer he can get away with sleeping in his old treehouse, rainy season is on the way and he doesn’t wanna get pneumonia or something because god knows he can’t afford medicine for that shit. He’s thinking that he’ll try the school next, that there’s an old janitor’s closet under the stairs that no one gives a shit about anymore. 

Now he’s still counting his pocket change, but he does that in the bathroom because he doesn’t want Archie or his dad to see just how tiny of a thread he’s hanging on by, and Mr A gets him a new toothbrush without asking. There’s dinner every night and pancakes on the weekend and it feels like an extended vacation compared to the Drive-In or the janitor’s closet.

He’s from The Wrong Side Of The Tracks, and even though he used to live in a house, his dad lives in a trailer and he lives nowhere but he still goes to school in a place with a student lounge and a cheerleading squad. His father is a gang leader and his friend’s father is the sheriff. 

When he stops and thinks about it, he realizes there are all kinds of contradictions to it. It’s all messy and scattered. He kissed his best friend in seventh grade in their treehouse and then Betty kissed his best friend and then Jughead kissed Betty once even though it felt Off and he doesn’t know if he wants to do it again. 

He’s from The Wrong Side Of The Tracks and his friends aren’t, but they’re still his friends.

 

The joke is: his friends went behind his back and then his dad was arrested because the sheriff found a gun in his trailer, but then the gun was actually planted but no one would believe that, but then his dad was actually innocent but then he got sent to prison anyways for ‘tampering with evidence’ and ‘obstruction of justice’ and other bullshit like that, and Jughead can’t stay with the Andrews anymore and his mom either can’t or doesn’t wanna take him in, so he gets sent to a foster home back on the side he’s from and transfers high schools even though the year isn’t over yet. 

It all happens in the span of a week. 

When he lounges in the cafeteria at Southside High, it’s easy to let himself adjust to his surroundings—he’s funny when he wants to be, knows the right things to say at the right times to get arms thrown over his shoulder and the whole table laughing. It’s easy to walk with these people, because maybe they’re his people. Where he belongs. And they’re not bad people—they were just born on the Wrong Side, and that’s no one’s fault. 

_That’s what this town does to people like us_ , his dad had told him, _they chew us up._ Jughead thinks maybe his dad had a point. 

“You’re fucking with me,” that boy from calculus says, eyebrows raised high. 

Jughead shakes his head, hands in his pockets, “I’m serious—it’s like, as big as a small castle.”

Someone else snorts, so “I’ve been there,” Jughead reminds them, “You walk in and there’s this huge ass staircase, velvet floors or something. Silver candlestick holders.”

“Damn, did you take one?”

Jughead snorts this time, on cue, shakes his head, because that was exactly what Cheryl warned them not to do, “I don’t wanna die.”

“Shit, right, they kill people there, don’t they?” a girl with dark purple hair asks, “The dad shot his son and then killed himself, right?”

Jughead grimaces, kicking dirt as he walk; it’s unseasonably warm today, but he hasn’t taken his jacket off. “Yeah,” he says slowly, “unfortunately that part is true.”

Calculus boy clicks his tongue, “North-siders are fuckin’ crazy.”

Jughead think of Archie and Betty and Veronica and Kevin and how he would get them rolling their eyes, “Aren’t we all a little crazy in our own way?”

Calculus boy laughs, throws an arm over his shoulder, the warm leather from his Serpent’s jacket pressing up against the back of his neck, “You and your philosophical shit, man.”

Jughead smiles something loose and greasy, the way people must see him. He fits right in here if he lets himself. It’s like he told his dad—he’ll be okay. 

He still has his laptop and his stories and his Story, the one that lays it all out in a way he hopes conveys what this town has become, good and bad and everything in between. He realizes now that the world is even more ugly than he thought—and he’s never had a very high opinion of it to begin with—some fathers shoot their sons for business and some fathers falsely confess to save them, the world is messy and unforgiving and there are some crazy fucking people out there. 

Maybe he still wants it to be beautiful. Just maybe not the way he planned. Beauty is subjective, after all. 

He sits with his legs crossed on Archie’s floor, somewhere past midnight on a lazy Saturday night, laptop balanced on his knees, and opens a new, blank document. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> comments keep my crops watered and my skin clear


End file.
